High yield means a topic is likely to appear, is shared by many questions and rewards a quick rule. By that test the order is: professional practice and ethics (about 15% of questions on our estimate), acute and emergency care, prescribing safety, common conditions in medicine and surgery, women's and children's health, mental health law, and compact UK facts such as screening, immunisation and DVLA rules. Rare disease detail ranks last.
How we rank "high yield"
The GMC does not publish how many PLAB 1 questions each topic gets. What it does publish is the scope: common, important or acute conditions that an F2 doctor sees, including those common in emergency departments, and the management of long-term conditions seen in primary care. Advanced general practice duties are excluded. The questions are based on the MLA content map. From this, we rank a topic by four tests.
- Breadth. How many presentations and conditions in the content map does it touch? Sepsis, chest pain and capacity assessment touch many.
- F2 relevance. Would an F2 doctor meet it on a ward, in the emergency department or in general practice?
- Rule density. Does a short rule decide the answer? Screening ages, immunisation timing and DVLA periods reward memory and practice.
- Transfer. Does learning it help answer questions in other domains? Prescribing safety and escalation do.
These are editorial judgements. If a topic scores high on two or more tests, put it in the first half of your plan.
Tier 1: learn these first
| Cluster | Why it earns marks | Where to study |
|---|---|---|
| Good medical practice, consent, capacity, confidentiality, candour, safeguarding | Largest estimated domain; several options sound reasonable and the GMC position decides | Professional and therapeutics domain |
| Recognising and escalating the deteriorating patient: sepsis, shock, anaphylaxis, cardiac arrest, overdose | Acute care is tested in every specialty as the first safe step | Acute and emergency domain |
| Prescribing safety: BNF doses, interactions, renal and hepatic adjustment, adverse reactions | Appears inside almost every clinical scenario | Professional and therapeutics domain |
| Chest pain, breathlessness, abdominal pain, headache, collapse | The commonest ward and emergency presentations | Cardiovascular, respiratory, gastro, neuro domains |
| Mental Health Act sections and mental capacity | Short, rule-based and UK-specific | Mental health domain |
Tier 2: high-volume clinical blocks
These domains each carry roughly 8% to 9% on our estimate, about 14 to 16 questions, and consist of conditions that every F2 doctor meets.
- Cardiovascular. Acute coronary syndrome, heart failure, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, ECG patterns, venous thromboembolism and cardiovascular drugs. Learn the first-line choice and the next investigation for each.
- Endocrine and renal. Diabetes including DKA, thyroid disease, adrenal insufficiency, acute kidney injury, chronic kidney disease and urinary tract problems. Many items ask what to stop or adjust in a patient on several drugs.
- Gastro and surgery. Gastrointestinal bleeding, the acute abdomen, liver disease, bowel cancer pathways and common surgical emergencies.
- Obstetrics, gynaecology and sexual health. Antenatal care, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, early pregnancy loss, contraception and sexually transmitted infections.
- Child health. The febrile child, bronchiolitis and croup, dehydration, neonatal problems, development, safeguarding and the immunisation schedule.
- Infection, cancer and palliative care. Antibiotic stewardship, notifiable disease, oncological emergencies, symptom control and last days of life.
- Neurology, ENT and eyes. Stroke and TIA, seizures, meningitis, the red eye and sudden visual loss.
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Tier 3: lower volume but still tested
Respiratory medicine (about 6%) and mental health (about 6%) have fewer items, but these are among the most reliable marks because the scenarios are common. Musculoskeletal, skin and blood disorders (about 7%) include fractures, the hot swollen joint, skin cancer pathways and anaemia. Revise them after the large blocks, not before.
Rare topics that tempt you
Do not give time to conditions that appear in textbooks but rarely in F2 practice unless the content map or your error log demands it. The GMC scope statement is an instruction about what to leave out: advanced general practice duties and specialist-level management are not the aim.
Compact UK facts worth memorising
These facts were verified on official pages when we checked on 21 October 2026. They are fast to learn and often decisive. The full list is in UK guidelines you must know.
- Cervical screening is offered at ages 25 to 64, every 5 years. Breast screening is at 50 to 70. Bowel screening is at 50 to 74 with a home kit every 2 years. Abdominal aortic aneurysm screening is offered to men at 65.
- Mental Health Act section 2 allows assessment for up to 28 days; section 3 allows treatment for up to 6 months, renewable; section 5(2) holds an inpatient for up to 72 hours; section 136 is a police power to take someone from a public place to a place of safety.
- DVLA rules differ between Group 1 (car, motorcycle) and Group 2 (bus, lorry), and by condition. Insulin-treated diabetes must be notified to DVLA.
- Good medical practice 2024 has four domains, and the duty of candour sits in the patients, partnership and communication domain.
Immunisation schedules and screening intervals are updated by the UK health agencies, sometimes within a year. Learn the current schedule from the NHS and UKHSA pages and note the date you checked it.
The first five topics in each domain
If your time is short, learn these first inside each domain. They come from the subtopic lists in our blueprint and reflect breadth and F2 relevance. The domain pages cover the rest.
| Domain | Start with |
|---|---|
| Acute and emergency | Sepsis, anaphylaxis, adult life support, early warning scores, overdose and poisoning |
| Cardiovascular | Acute coronary syndrome, heart failure, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, venous thromboembolism |
| Respiratory | Asthma, COPD, community-acquired pneumonia, pulmonary embolism, pneumothorax |
| Gastro and surgery | Upper gastrointestinal bleeding, appendicitis and obstruction, gallstone disease, liver disease, bowel cancer pathways |
| Endocrine and renal | Diabetic ketoacidosis, type 2 diabetes treatment, thyroid disease, acute kidney injury, urinary tract infection |
| Neuro, ENT and eyes | Stroke and TIA, epilepsy, headache and meningitis, red eye, sudden visual loss |
| Mental health | Depression and risk, psychosis, self-harm, alcohol withdrawal, Mental Health Act sections |
| Child health | The febrile child, bronchiolitis and croup, dehydration, safeguarding, immunisation |
| Obstetrics, gynaecology, sexual health | Pre-eclampsia, early pregnancy bleeding, antepartum haemorrhage, contraception, sexually transmitted infections |
| Musculoskeletal, skin, blood | Neck of femur and wrist fractures, the hot swollen joint, back pain red flags, skin cancer, anaemia |
| Infection, cancer, palliative | Antibiotic choice, notifiable disease, neutropenic sepsis, cord compression, symptom control |
| Professional and therapeutics | Consent, capacity, confidentiality, candour, safeguarding, prescribing safety |
A worked prioritisation example
Consider a doctor with five years in surgery and little recent psychiatry or paediatrics, who has twelve weeks. Their baseline set shows 80% on gastro and surgery, 60% on cardiovascular, 45% on mental health, 40% on child health and 50% on the professional domain. The plan follows from the tiers.
- Weeks 2 and 3: professional domain. It is the largest estimated block and at 50% has the largest gain per hour.
- Weeks 4 and 5: child health and obstetrics. Both are about 8% to 9% and both are low in the baseline.
- Week 6: mental health. Smaller block, but the Mental Health Act rules are quick to learn and the baseline gain is large.
- Weeks 7 and 8: acute, cardiovascular and respiratory. Strong areas get timed maintenance, not new reading.
- Weeks 9 to 12: mixed timed blocks, mocks and the error log.
Gastro and surgery gets only mixed-block practice, because it is already strong. This is the logic of high yield in practice: marks per hour, not marks per topic.
What to skip until late
Skip detailed pathophysiology that does not change management, rare syndromes and long lists of eponymous signs. Skip guideline detail that is not a decision point, such as full audit tools or the stepwise detail of a pathway you will not be asked to start. If your error log shows that a skipped topic is costing marks, bring it back. The aim is to spend the first 70% of your time on the 70% of content that appears most.
Check your own yield
A topic is high yield for you if it is both likely to appear and likely to cost you marks. After every block of questions, count errors by topic. A topic with three or more errors in a week jumps a tier in your plan, whatever its general weight. A topic with no errors in four weeks can drop to maintenance. Your error log is the only dataset that is truly about you, so give it more authority than any list, including this one.
Skills that cut across topics
Four skills raise your score in every domain, so treat them as topics in their own right.
- Reading the question stem for "next" and "initial". The best investigation is not always the best first step.
- Calculation without a calculator. Weight-based doses, infusion rates and percentages must be doable by hand because calculators are not allowed.
- Interpreting results with units. The exam uses SI units such as mmol/L and kPa, and HbA1c in mmol/mol.
- Using UK names. Adrenaline, paracetamol, furosemide and salbutamol, with doses written in micrograms and nanograms.
A weekly use of this list
Take one cluster per day from Tier 1 and one from Tier 2, answer 30 questions on each, and add every miss to your error log. At the end of each week, rank your clusters by error rate and give the top two an extra session. Use the study plan to place these sessions in a schedule, and the twelve domain pages for the subtopics inside each cluster.
Sit a timed PLAB 1 mock exam
Blueprint-weighted questions under exam timing, then a breakdown of your result by domain.
Frequently asked questions
What are the most important topics for PLAB 1?
Professional practice and ethics, acute and emergency care, prescribing safety, and the common conditions of an F2 doctor across medicine, surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics and psychiatry. The professional and therapeutics domain is our largest estimated block at about 15%, roughly 27 questions.
Does the GMC publish PLAB 1 topic weights?
No. The GMC publishes the MLA content map, which lists areas of clinical practice, areas of professional knowledge, patient presentations and conditions without percentage weights. Our domain weights are editorial estimates derived from its breadth.
Should I focus on rare conditions?
No. The GMC says PLAB 1 covers common, important or acute conditions seen by an F2 doctor, plus long-term conditions managed in primary care. Rare conditions appear mainly when the first safe step is the point being tested.
Is ECG interpretation high yield?
It sits inside the cardiovascular and acute domains and appears as part of scenarios about ischaemia, arrhythmia, heart block and hyperkalaemia. Learn patterns and the first action, not rare syndromes.
Are UK-specific facts like screening ages and DVLA rules worth learning?
Yes. They are compact, factual and different from many home systems, so they are efficient marks. Use only current official sources and check changes.